The Parlous State

The Parlous State

In front of Parliament in 2004, Paul Lennon stood up to announce his vision of Tasmania. It was a powerful and inspiring speech designed to impress Tasmanians of the great future that stretched before them and noting that the economy had never been better, that we were the envy of the world and that the young people who had fled earlier were flocking back in droves to our shores. The economy was sound and there had never been so many opportunities. Employment was at its highest level in decades and that our great forests and way of life were the envy of the world.

In the short period of three years, that vision has been shattered. Quickly there has emerged a conception of the corruption and backroom dealings that have dominated the news ever since that vision was pronounced. Not a day goes by when there is not a report on the latest renege of the terms of this promise. The total destruction of everything that makes Tasmania Tasmania, looms large. We have gone from a proud, independent state, which, if we are to believe the same man who propounded the vision, to one that is utterly dependent for its survival on a polluting pulp mill that is about to destroy the heart of Tasmanian life, with dubious input to the economy and the creation of a mere 292 jobs.

Here is the promise. Read it and weep!

Paul Lennon - 2004.

Mr Speaker,

I rise to my feet on this day in October 2004 when Tasmania is experiencing one of its golden periods of economic development.

There is a vibrancy in Tasmania that we have not felt for years. The smile is back on people’s faces. Our children have a future – here.

I ask you to look at the streets of our cities and towns. The young people, in their 20s and 30s, are back. They are staying here. They have meaningful jobs. They are among the drivers of our economy.

The Tasmanian economy has never been stronger, business confidence is high, unemployment is low, and the exodus of our population has stopped. We knew we were attracting Seachangers, but now we are retaining those who would have left to seek jobs interstate and overseas not many years ago.

What I find most satisfying is that those who did leave are coming back in their droves for the opportunities that exist in the New Tasmania. This is our own Seachange.

Mr Speaker, Today our population climbs towards a half a million, at the rate of five to six thousand new Tasmanians every year. Yet it was only a few years ago that we seemed locked into an absolute
maximum of 470 thousand and there were dire predictions by Access Economics in particular that we were on a downward spiral.

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But what has happened? Capital investment in Tasmania has increased by more than 28 per cent in the last 12 months. That’s confidence, Mr Speaker. That is confidence.

We’ve had 29 consecutive months of employment growth. There are 20,000 more jobs since jobs-recovery began in early 1999.

Unemployment is almost four percentage points lower than 1998.

We’re marching towards a quarter of a million jobs. In a
population of just under half a million, that’s remarkable. That is confidence, Mr Speaker.

It’s a time when we can say we have put the bad years behind us, that we can set aside the Paupers in Paradise syndrome that we used to wear almost as a badge of honour. We still live in the best place on earth and now we have an economy to sustain the dream, to live the dream.

Today, I am proud to inform the Parliament that the Government has set in train the process that may see one of our dreams realised – a modern, world-scale pulp and paper industry that will maximise Tasmania’s returns for its sustainable management of its forests, that will indeed reward Tasmania for the way it has cared for its forests.

What I am about to outline to honourable members today is the process by which we can have the best of both worlds:
• forests that are the envy of the rest of the world, and
• the most modern downstream processing plant of its kind in the world.

And we can do it while staying within the Regional Forest Agreement. We can do it by continuing to protect our oldgrowth forests.

We can do that, Mr Speaker, because pulp technology has now reached the point where plantation timber is by far the best feedstock – and old growth the least desirable. So there is no nexus between a pulp mill in Tasmania and our old growth forests. No nexus.

A pulp mill that meets the world’s toughest emission standards, and that’s what we’ll have, will enable us to maintain a land, sea and air environment that we can still call pristine.

Mr Speaker, I should make it clear from the start that I am not here today to speak in favour of any particular project, because, as of today, there is no project before us.

Certainly, we all know that one at least is under consideration in the private sector and there may be more. After all, Tasmania now has a reputation for being a place to do business, and Tasmanians are good people to do business with.

Twelve months ago I announced that I had asked the Resource Planning and Development Commission, a body completely independent of Government, to undertake a thorough review of the environmental guidelines for bleached kraft eucalypt pulp mills.

I did so because it was clear to me that the world had moved on since those days 15 years ago when Tasmania lost the Wesley Vale pulp mill because of environmental concerns, a development that would have been the single largest in our history.

Today, Tasmania exports about five million tonnes of eucalypt woodchips a year to Japan and Indonesia. Very little is processed here in terms of converting woodchips to wood pulp and then into paper.
A world-scale pulp mill could more than halve our woodchip exports – more than halve the heaps at Triabunna, Burnie and Bell Bay – because we would be value-adding for ourselves.

At the moment most of what’s left from native forest operations, after sawlogs and veneer logs have been segregated out for the specialist mills around the State, is pulpwood that is chipped and exported. [ …. ]

Mr Speaker, the legacy of Wesley Vale was a lesson in how not to realise a pulp mill. It was all wrong, there were no early ground rules.

Members will recall that Wesley Vale would have used
elemental chlorine as a bleaching agent and that it was the by-products of this chlorine use that effectively sounded the death knell for Wesley Vale.
It undermined public confidence in the project to such an extent that the Foreign Investment Review Board stalled its approval and North Broken Hill and Noranda withdrew. [ … ]

From my visit to Scandinavia in August 2003 I knew that the technology of making pulp had moved on. Mills in Finland and Sweden had reduced their effluents to such a degree as to be negligible. That gave those new mills broad community support. In Scandinavia, that was significant.

Mr Speaker, like many other Tasmanians I never lost sight of the prospect of a minimum impact mill here in Tasmania. [ …. ]

We have built a sustainable forest industry in Tasmania that sits alongside the highest levels of conserved forests in the world.
We are the best in the world at conservation. We are the best in the world at sustainable forestry.
That is beyond challenge.

My belief is that we in Tasmania can do what the Scandinavians have achieved, and we can do it even better. We can have the most environmentally-sound pulp mill in the world, one in which the Wesley Vale problems are basically eliminated.

Last November I asked the Resource Planning and Development Commission to review pulping technology around the world and to recommend the emission limits that would make Tasmania the world leader in environmental controls. The RPDC used the
1995 Commonwealth guidelines as the base for its work, further tightening allowable limits.

[ next 12 pages omitted. They promise much and deliver nothing. ]

As I said at the beginning, this is a golden period of economic development in Tasmania.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, honourable members.
_______________________________________

The speech goes on to elucidate on the World’s best practice, the tough environmental guidelines, the exclusion of a chlorine-based processing plant, and the rigorous assessment process with input from every member of the public before any pulp mill would be allowed to built in Tasmania.

So what has happened?

What prompted 11 000 people to march in protest?

What has happened to get 20 000 people to sign a petition to restore democracy?

What has happened to prompt Action groups to spring up all over the State?

What has happened to cause 99%+ of all people in a Newspaper Poll to reject this mill outright?

Now look at the reality. Every single aspect of this speech, including the other twelve pages has been assigned to the trash can. What we are having forced upon us, without a single public voice being heard and against every recommendation, is a chlorine bleach mill that is designed to process our remaining old growth forests, while the piles of plantation chips in Triabunna, Burnie and Bell Bay will not decrease by one iota. Every single environmental factor has been watered down by the Government and Gunns as to make them totally ineffective. We will be forced to suffer the results of this pollution and destruction, and our rights to object have been legally removed by the new Approval Act.

Why has every single promise in this speech been broken, and why are we having forced upon us the absolute antithesis of the vision?

Was a it a willful act of deliberately misleading the entire State as to every aspect of this process, with the forgone knowledge that we would end up with one of the most destructive and polluting mills and that the entire economy of the state would be destroyed to promote the profits of Gunns, a single, large, private company?

From the day that this project was publicly mooted and these words were uttered, ‘I am not here today to speak in favour of any particular project, because, as of today, there is no project before us’, there has been nothing but deceit.
There is the widely reported lunch where Paul Lennon dined with John Gay in Hobart and somehow a report about a projected pulp mill was inadvertently left on the table after they departed. This was some time prior to this speech!

Everything suggests a total collusion with the aims of Gunns taking precedence over the affairs of State, to such a pitch that Paul Lennon is now viewed as a paid emissary of Gunns. Large subsidies have been given to Gunns, and in return, Gunns has given large donations to both the Labour and Liberal part y funds. Private contracts have been made between a subsidiary of Gunns to restore Paul Lennon’s house, a type of work which they would not normally undertake. Wrongdoing was denied after it was exposed.

But the question must be asked, why and how has this volte face come about? Was it part of the initial plan where Paul Lennon knew that this speech and vision was a pack of lies and that he had no intention of ratifying them, or has it crept up on him?
Normally a politician who is advised by a massive bureaucracy, on seeing the total inability of the proponent to meet the terms and conditions of the contract, would pull the plug. But not Paul Lennon. He has bullied his way through all opposition, dismissed the controlling bodies, and bent over backwards to accommodate the demands of Gunns. All part of the plan?
Certainly it appears that that was the intention of John Gay. There has never been any particular effort to hide the fact that he wanted the largest pulp mill that he could get, that he had no intention of renouncing his profitable export of wood chips and that he wanted a mill that would be capable of processing the Old Growth, rather than plantation timber. To achieve this, he would need to incorporate a chlorine bleach process. All these changes were consistently leaked over a period of time, and the government bowed to accommodate his wishes. When it failed the compliance tests, he withdrew from the ‘assessment’ process, and demanded an ‘approval’ process instead. Once more, the government under the guidance of Paul Lennon, was compliant. No-one else, including the public, was consulted or even considered.
Plantation timber, according to John Gay, would be processed at his second mill in Hampshire if he achieved the profits that he expected from the first one!

Did Paul Lennon know this in advance, and if he did, was he a willing participant in this deceit? This would mean that he was actively supporting this private interests of a company over the head of the electorate whom he was supposed to be representing. An abnegation of his duties, and an impeachable offence. An offence that should normally be investigated by a Crime Commission or a Royal Commission.

If he did not know all this in advance, then he is either a total moral weakling and simply caved in to the demands of Gunns and betrayed the people who elected him, or he had a financial motive for playing along. Other ex-Premiers have ended up on the board of Gunns, and the past actions of both Gunns Board and the Government have not exactly been noted for their probity, having both been the subject of a previous Royal Commission enquiry. Honesty and integrity do not appear to be part of the scenery where big business in Tasmania is concerned!

I just hope that we will not have to wait to see the total destruction of the Tasmanian way of life, its scenery, its tourist industry, its fishing industry, its farm lands and wildlife before we realise what we have lost.

And all for a mere 292 jobs, while the profits from this destruction head overseas to the big investors in Europe, America and the mainland.

Barnaby Drake